The Boy From The Basement

Trust

Everything hurt.
My face, my eyes, my legs, my arms, my stomach. I was awake, but I had my eyes closed. I was to afraid to open them again, worried I might look into the eyes of the despicable Mike, who has done nothing but torture me. My face felt large and tight. The swelling on my nose and my left eye throbbed and I could feel blood pulsing within the swell. I hurled forward a bit and moved my hand to my stomach in pain. I hadn't yet bothered to try figure out where I was.
I felt bones stabbing into my bottom and along my lower back. Another bone supported the weight of my upper body and neck. I felt as if I was being cradled like a baby, which was when I realised that I really was.
With pain and strenght, I opened my eyes slowly. My heart dropped when my eyes finally fully opened, and I was staring right into a set of green marble eyes. Trent.
The bones were his arms and legs. Trent looked down at me with concern and pain. My heart began to pound as I continued to look into his eyes, which were surrounded by swelling and bruises. Tears burned my eyes and I broke into a sob. I couldn't bear to look at Trent in this awful state. It killed me to see him so hurt. I rested my head onto his chest and curled my body towards his. My sobs made my stomach and chest ache.
I then felt a comforting hand rest on my back while the other hand, on the arm supporting my weight, rested on my shoulder. Trent rested his head on top of mine and soon after his head rested on top of mine, I felt a cold droplet of water plop onto my almost bald head. A tear.
I looked up at him with my wet, red eyes. His face was less than 20cm away from mine.
A tear trickled down Trent's face as he smiled with pain.
"Trent, you look awful. I'm so sorry that Mike did that to you,"
I sobbed, looking down and shaking my head.
"Like I said, I'm used to it I guess," he said with a shaky voice.
My head shot up and I looked him angrily.
"It doesn't matter that you're 'used to it' Trent, there is no excuse for the way that Mike is treating you!" I yelled and whispered at the same time.
Trent sighed and shrugged. We sat in silence for a moment, both looking away from one another. I looked at his skinny hands, which were still on my back and my shoulder.
"Oh um, I'm sorry," Trent stuttered while pulling himself away from me.
I opened my mouth and then grabbed his hand desperately. It was so cold, yet so soft and gentle. I looked into his eyes with plead.
"No it's ok, it's fine," I assured him.
I wanted to stay like this, in his arms. Because for the first time in just over a week, I felt safe.
I knew I could trust Trent, even though only knowing him for a week now. I had spent a week being alone with him for around 23 hours a day, so that gave us a lot of time to learn to trust each other. Trent then smiled and chuckled a little. He was happy. He then put his hands back where they were before and pulled me towards him. His cold breath tickled my face and made my stomach flutter a little.
"You look awful too," Trent said teasingly.
I laughed quietly and put my knuckle to his chest. Trent smiled at me with pleasure. For some reason I quickly became self conscious. Did I really look bad? I knew he was joking around, but the comment he made hurt me a little.
Trent saw my sadness and shook me a little so I would looked at him.
"Sorry, I meant it as a joke," he said, upset that he had hurt me.
"No it's not that. I'm just still in shock of what happened earlier. It's haunting me," I lied.
I then began to quiver and let a few tears escape out of embarrassment. Trent lifted his hand to wipe my tear with the back of his index finger. His hand then trailed down my cheek and down my arm slowly.
"You don't look that awful by the way, I still think you're pretty," Trent with a gentle tone. I looked at him in disbelief. He thought I was pretty?
"You think I'm pretty?" I asked.
"Well, yeh, and not because you're the only girl that I have known for more than a minute," he joked.
I giggled with happiness. He thought I was pretty.

I don't necessarily know why I felt this way. Just because he called me pretty, why did I suddenly feel so happy and excited?
Why did Trent make me so excited? I mean sure, he is an awesome guy, so gentle and so kind, he's constantly making sure that I'm okay. I have been avoiding this thought for to long now, and I think it might just be true.
I think I'm in love with Trent.
I'm sure I'm not in love, it's definitely just a crush, but I have never felt this way for anyone before, so this new feeling scared me.
I was still blushing over Trent's words.
"I'm sorry, thank you, Trent."
Trent smiled. The back of his hand rested on my stomach from when it trailed down my arm before. I then noticed a huge red mark going around his wrist, probably from when the men had grabbed it and held him off the ground. With my index finger, I placed it on his mark.
"It's just a small mark, not that bad," he said in attempt to not make me worry.
That's the thing, Trent had so many marks on him, that it did bother me. The bruises that went all the way up his arms, the cuts on his face, the chip in his ear, the cracks in his nails and the red circles on his face.
"Trent of course it is bad. Look at how many injuries you have!" Trent looked down at his arms and hands. With a sigh, he turned to me.
"I know it's bad, but there is nothing we can do about it. It's just something that I have had to learn to live with."
"That's the thing Trent. Maybe there is something we can do about this. My school is going to be attacked soon. Everyone will be slaughtered! We have to do something to stop them, this can't happen!"
Trent looked down and thought to himself.
"But what would we do? We can't stop them, we can't even beat them in a fight!"
"I know Trent, but we have to come up with something. I can't let myself be apart of assassinating my whole school. We have to come up with a plan."
This was going to be hard. We would have to fight against the guys if we wanted to save my school. The question however, was how.
I needed to find out more about their plan so that I could come up with one of my own. That's when I came up with something.
"We need to get out of here," I ordered Trent.
He looked at me confused.
"That's impossible," he stated.
"No it isn't. We just find some way to unlock the door."
Trent considered my idea.
"How would we do that?"
I didn't know. I had no clue what I was doing. I did have a vision though, some ideas of how to make this work.
"We could use some string? Or some wire or a bobby pin?"
Trent thought to himself once more.
"It just seems to risky, I tried escaping once and I faced the consequences. I don't want to go through that again, nor do I want you to either."
I sighed. In the back of my head, I thought of how he had just said that he didn't want me to get hurt. I felt a small rush of excitement in my body, but then I calmed myself down and focused again.
"I know this will be risky. It's easy for me to be so keen and reckless to want to get out of here because I have a motive. I want to get out here to find out what their plan is and save my school. Surely you would want to help me do that right?"
Trent sighed and opened his mouth but didn't say a word. It was silent for a second before Trent spoke.
"I have a 'motive'," Trent said silently.
I waited for him to continue.
"My mum. Mike knows so much about her and earlier I saw something in the office room. It was a photo of Mike and a lady. I think that lady was my mum. There's also so much about my life I don't know about, and that office room contains all the secrets of my past. I'm just scared of getting caught. Because if we get caught escaping, we might get more than just injured."
I gulped.
"If we're careful enough, he will never notice. I have a few tricks up my sleeve that will help sneak us into the house."
Trent chuckled at my enthusiasm. Again, we sat silent for a bit.
"We will have to be careful, promise?"
I smiled widely. Trent had finally agreed to my plan.
"Promise," I said with a contented tone.
"So what's the plan then?"
I hadn't yet thought of a plan. We needed to talk about that.

After ages of talking about different alternatives and outcomes, we agreed on a plan. When Mike next fetched us for our chores, we would do them as usual, making sure we did nothing to anger or displease him. Then, we would return to the basement as usual. We would wait until the men left and were far away from the house, out of sight. Then, I would take the wire from my bra so I could use it to pick lock the door.
I honestly don't know why it took us so long to come up with a plan. Probably because we were both so mentally drained.
I sat next to Trent now, because me sitting on his lap began to hurt him. Our shoulders touched gently and  I sat with my legs stretched out. Time had flown by fast. It had been an hour since I had woken up from my unconsciousness, and I still felt just as bad. I once again became curious about a few things and decided to ask Trent.
"How long was I out for?"
Trent squinted and thought for a second.
"9 hours, I think. I think after a while you were just sleeping because you started moving around."
A laughed a little bit with awkwardness.

"What happened after I passed out?"
Trent stared ahead for a bit. Maybe this was to traumatic for him to talk about. I opened my mouth to tell him that he didn't have to say anything, but he spoke anyways.
"Mike kept... hurting you until he noticed you were out. He said some stuff about us for a bit. I got hurt a little more, but I think he got bored after a while, because I wouldn't pass out. He then left and told me to go back to the basement. So I took you with me and headed back. I refused to let you go because... I didn't want to lose you again. I thought he killed you. You don't know how happy I was when you started moving again after hours of not. Then I fixed you up and made sure you were okay," he explained to me, finishing with a smile.
A tear sat in the corner of his eye.
With both hands, I used them to reach to his face. I wiped away his tears and smiled.
"Thank you, Trent. Thank you for being here for me since the day we met. I don't know where I would be now without you."
We both smiled at each other for a bit. Trent then looked at my lips, which were stained in blood and covered in cuts. I looked at his at the same time. We stayed like this for a while before looking away, as tension began to spark. The tension became awkward and I wiggled a little in my seating position to move away from him just a fraction.
"Let's hope this plan works," Trent said kindly.
Then again, he smiled. That smile. It was so pure and kind.
I would give anything to see him smile like that all the time. I then nodded.
"It will work, I promise."